Light Reading's 2012 Social Media Report

In a world where "find me on LinkedIn" or "follow me on Twitter" has become as common as "nice to meet you," it's undeniable that social networking is redefining human interaction.

Whether that's a good thing, both personally and professionally, is less clear. But it's one of the reasons we've conducted our second annual social media survey. This year, we surveyed 910 telecom professionals, including 234 service providers, to see how their social networking habits are evolving. (See Light Reading's 2011 Social Networking Survey.)

By and large, the mood was one of "wary acceptance" toward social networking. Case in point:

Twenty percent of respondents said Facebook was their least favorite network, yet nearly three-fourths use it on a weekly basis or more.

Sixty-three percent say they use social networks get information, expert opinion or data related to a business issue, but 43 percent said information on social networks is not accurate.

Just under half would not pay for any social networks. The rest found enough value in at least one to cough up if the free version went away.

The networks
The past year has seen a number of social networks like location app Gowalla exit the scene and a number of new players like Google Plus and Pinterest emerge in a big way. At the same time, bigwigs LinkedIn Corp. , Facebook and Twitter Inc. have expanded their feature sets, built up their mobile presence and continued to capture the most attention amongst telecom professionals.

There's certainly been a lot of change, but our survey respondents have, for the most part, continued following the usage trends we observed in 2011 -- with a few notable exceptions.

Why should service providers care?
This survey isn't necessarily unique to telecom -- although social media is made possible by this industry -- but service providers need to be aware of what people in their industry are doing on social networks. At a minimum, it's a major way consumer-facing brands like the wireless operators do customer service. But, Jessica Zimet, Amdocs Ltd. (NYSE: DOX)'s social media manager, says that the vendor, as well as some of its service provider customers, is doing much more with social media, including integrating it with their customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

"I think [service providers] are very focused social because they have to be," Zimet says. "Social media brought these customers back their voice. And, social CRM is really important for them."

Amdocs, for one, uses social media to reach trade media and potential customers, disseminate messages to large groups of users, facilitate discussions, encourage employees within the company to become brand ambassadors, promote events and to add an extra layer to marketing campaigns.

On the following pages, the survey responses paint a picture of how other telecom professionals of all ages, job functions and geographies use different networks, how they feel about them and how they're changing their professional and personal lives.

Six different communications service providers join to debate their visions of the future CSP, following a landmark presentation from AT&T on its massive virtualization efforts and a look back on where the telecom industry has been and where it's going from two industry veterans.

Level 3 Communications' Chief Security Officer Dale Drew says service providers, manufacturers and even consumers must combine to halt massive DDoS attacks using IoT devices in botnets. The solution he has in mind includes reputation-based routing by the service provider but also more secure endpoint devices and greater consumer awareness.

Chris Novak, director of the Verizon Enterprise Solutions Risk Team, explains that enterprises who don't conduct a thorough audit of their assets often leave some things unprotected because they don't know they exist. Many times these unprotected assets are part of corporate M&A activity but left unshielded they can become a hacker's playground, he tells Light ...

Adrian Scrase, CTO at standards body ETSI, talks about the various initiatives and specifications developments related to NFV, 5G and NGP (next-generation protocols) that will underpin next-gen networks.

GeSI is a global e-Sustainability Initiative organization bringing together 40 big multinational companies around the world. According to GeSI's report, information and communication technology can make the world more sustainable. Luis Neves, chairman of GeSI, shared with us his opinion at Ultra-broadband Forum (UBBF2016).

Mobile revenues are declining. Digicel, a player in the Caribbean telecommunications/entertainment space, has found a new way to engage customers and drive revenue. John Quinn, CTO of Digicel, shared with us its story at Ultra-broadband Forum (UBBF2016)

Altibox is the biggest fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) player and the largest provider of video and TV in Norway. They started out with zero customers in 2002. Now they have close to half a million households and companies attached to their FTTH business. Nils Arne, CEO of Altibox shared with us their story and insight on 5G at Ultra-broadband Forum (UBBF2016).

GeSI is a global e-Sustainability Initiative organization bringing together 40 big multinational companies around the world. According to GeSI's report, information and communication technology can make the world more sustainable. Luis Neves, chairman of GeSI, shared with us his opinion at Ultra-broadband Forum (UBBF2016).

Mobile revenues are declining. Digicel, a player in the Caribbean telecommunications/entertainment space, has found a new way to engage customers and drive revenue. John Quinn, CTO of Digicel, shared with us its story at Ultra-broadband Forum (UBBF2016)

Altibox is the biggest fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) player and the largest provider of video and TV in Norway. They started out with zero customers in 2002. Now they have close to half a million households and companies attached to their FTTH business. Nils Arne, CEO of Altibox shared with us their story and insight on 5G at Ultra-broadband Forum (UBBF2016).

At Ultra-broadband Forum, Houlin Zhao, Secretary General of ITU, discussed how important it is for countries, companies and everybody to be working together to help to build the broadband and digital economies (UBBF2016).

ETSI has created an Industry Specification Group to work on Next Generation Protocols (NGP ISG), looking at evolving communications and networking protocols to provide the scale, security, mobility and ease of deployment required for the connected society of the 21st century. The NGP ISG will identify the requirements for next generation protocols and network ...

Digital Object Architecture provides a basic information infrastructure that can facilitate interoperability between or among different systems, processes, and other information resources, including different identity management systems. Digital objects are networked objects that are named by digital object identifiers and instantiated by an infrastructure service ...

Huawei's new CloudVPN Integration Services Solution reduces the complexity of enterprise-leased lines. The new solution was a joint development between Huawei and ten other vendors, including Fortinet and Infoblox.

Join us for an in-depth interview between Steve Saunders of Light Reading and Alexis Black Bjorlin of Intel as they discuss the release of the company's Silicon Photonics platform, its performance, long-term prospects, customer expectations and much more.

Even when there's a strong pipeline of female talent in the comms industry, it tends to leak all the way to the top. McKinsey & Company says women experience pipeline leakage at three primary points: being unable to enter, being stuck in the middle or being locked out of the top. Each pipeline pain point presents its own challenges, but also opportunities to stop the leak. Wireless operator Sprint is making a conscious effort to improve its own pipeline from new recruits to the C-suite, and it wants the rest of the industry to do the same. In this Women in Comms radio show, WiC Board Member and Sprint Vice President of Enterprise Sales Nelly Pitocco will give us her take on the industry's pipeline challenges. Pitocco, who joined Sprint in May and has spent 20 years in the comms industry, will also offer solutions, share how Sprint is tackling the challenge within its own organization and take your questions live on air.